2019 Annual Business Survey (ABS) Instructions

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2019 Annual Business Survey (ABS) Instructions

Please respond for the business named in the address label or survey. Report for your company's domestic U.S. operations only, including all majority-owned U.S. subsidiaries, unless instructed otherwise. Carefully prepared estimates are acceptable if book figures are not readily available.

You are able to save and log out of your account at any time. Your responses will be saved and you are able to log back into the survey, and complete more responses at a later time. In addition, the survey will navigate you to the next applicable question. You may not be asked to complete all the questions included in these instructions. This guide is for select survey questions only.

To report online:

1. Sign-in or Register at 2. Add your authentication code found in the letter you received from Census and NSF. 3. Report by clicking on "REPORT NOW." You can return to your account over multiple

sessions to complete. 4. For assistance completing this survey, please log-in to your Census Bureau account at

and send us a secure message or call the customer help line at 1-888-824-9954, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern time. 5. Please visit How Do I Get Started? for additional information. 6. Please visit How-To Videos for information on Logging into the Respondent portal. 7. Please visit Information for Respondents and click on one of the links in the "Questionnaires" section to see a worksheet containing all of the questions on the ABS. This worksheet is for informational purposes only and should not be filled out.

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The ABS collects information from all kinds of businesses, and the survey contains sections that may not apply to your business. The online reporting tool will guide you to the questions for which responses are required. Depending on the size of your business, you may need to collaborate with colleagues in different departments to complete different sections of the survey. For more information, visit the "How Do I Share Survey Access?" section within the respondent portal.

Instructions are provided for select questions, identifiable by their screen titles, within the following sections of the survey:

Section A: Company Information Section B: Owner Characteristics Section C: Products and Processes Section D: Research and Development Section E: Technology and Intellectual Property Section F: Contact Information

Not all of the questions in the ABS are necessarily applicable to your business. The online survey will guide you to appropriate questions based on your responses. The question by question instruction guide below states each time a skip will occur given a ce rtain answer.

Each question is listed by Section letter, an Owner designation (within Section B only), followed by a Question number. For example, A.2 denotes the second question in Section A; and B.2.1 denotes the first question in Section B, which asks for the characteristics of the Owner #2.

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Section A. Company Information

A.1 Ceased Operations

Question: "A.1 Has this business ceased operations?"

Completion of the 2018 ABS is required even if this business or its owner(s) ceased business operations due to a court-approved bankruptcy, reorganization, or liquidation plan.

If the business ceased operations before 2018, select "Yes," and respond to the A.2 Date Ceased Operations question to report the date that business operations ceased.

Otherwise, select "No," and continue with the survey.

If another entity acquired or merged with this business during or after 2018, report for the part of 2018 that this business was in operation prior to its acquisition or merger. If the business's name has changed, please complete the entire survey regardless of when the change took place. You may type the new business name and an explanation of what has occurred in the closing "Remarks" screen that appears before you submit the survey.

A.3 Business Ownership ? Foreign-Owned Entity

Question: "A.3 In 2018, was this business a majority-owned subsidiary of a foreign company?"

Special reporting instructions apply if this business was majority-owned by a foreign entity (company or government) not created or organized in the United States.

All direct and indirect ownership interests held by the foreign entity in this business in 2018 should be summed to determine whether the foreign entity's percentage of ownersh ip was more than fifty percent.

When answering the remaining questions, report for the foreign entity's U.S.-based operations only, which includes all majority-owned U.S. subsidiaries/divisions located in the United States in 2018, unless explicitly instructed otherwise. For reporting purposes, the foreign parent and/or any other foreign affiliate, which was not owned by the U.S. subsidiary/division, should be treated the same as any business partner, customer, or supplier that the U.S. -based operations does not own.

If the U.S.-based subsidiary/division pays its foreign parent for R&D services or if the foreign parent pays or reimburses its U.S.-based subsidiary/division for R&D services, those costs should be included when responding to questions in Section D: Research and Development.

Report this business's information by using U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP) as recognized by the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB). If your company follows International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), please estimate any adjustments that would be required to conform to U.S. GAAP.

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A.4 Business Ownership ? U.S. Entity Question: "A.4 In 2018, did another U.S. company or other entity own more than 50 percent of this business? Examples of other entities include estates, trusts, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), associations, membership clubs, and cooperatives."

Responses to this question help to eliminate double counting in cases where both parties in a business acquisition receive this survey, and to identify business that were maj ority-owned by another business(es), or created or organized legal entity(ies) in 2018.

If you answer "Yes," the survey will automatically skip to the A.6 Business - 10% or More Ownership question.

A.5 Business Ownership ? Government or Tribal Entity

Question: "A.5 In 2018, was this business owned by a government or tribal entity?"

Select "Yes" to report on behalf of a government agency, or a federally or state -recognized Indian Nation (variously called a tribe, nation, band, pueblo, community, rancheria, or native village).

Select "No" to respond for a self-employed person, or a nontribal-owned business, regardless of the owner's or owners' American Indian and Alaska Native enrolled or principal tribal affiliations.

A.6 Business - 10% or More Ownership

Question: "A.6 In 2018, did at least one person own 10% or more of this business? Do not count parent companies, estates, trusts, or other entities."

For this survey, the word "person" refers to a human owning rights, claims, interests, or stock in this business in 2018; and does not refer to ownership by another business, or a cre ated or organized legal entity.

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A.7 Number of Owners

Question: "A.7 In 2018, how many people owned this business?

Do not combine two or more owners to create one owner. Count spouses and partners as separate owners."

Report the number of people that directly owned the rights, claims, interests, or stock in this business in 2018. For this survey, sole proprietors and self-employed people are considered owners of independent businesses. If you are the sole proprietor or self-employed, you should report "1 person" (or "2 people" if you owned the business jointly with your spouse in 2018.)

Select "1 person" in situations where different companies, plus one individual perso n, held the ownership interests in this business in 2018.

Select "11 or more people" when the majority ownership in 2018 was dispersed among large numbers of owners, members, or shareholders, for example, a large publicly traded company, a civic association, a cooperative, a country club, a credit union, or a trade association.

Select "Don't know," if no individual person(s) owned the business in 2018; for example, an ownership by a holding company or a nonprofit organization operating a commercial business. A.8 Number of W-2Paid Domestic Employees or Employee/Owners

Question: "A.8 For the pay period including March 12, 2018, how many people worked for this business, including those paid through grants? Include both full-time and part-time employees as well as yourself. Include only persons in the U.S. Count each person only once. If none, report zero."

Please count each person only once, and report the total number of owners (in line a) and employees (in line b) who worked for this business during the pay period including March 12, 2018, and were issued a 2018 W-2 form for full- or part-time employment, or other compensation. Report owners and employees from domestic operations only.

If a person was at one point an owner, and at one point an employee, please count them as whatever they were on March 12, 2018.

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